


Confrontations

by distractionpie



Series: Better than Heaven [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-25
Updated: 2012-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-31 17:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just another room in a string of motels, and an archangel with unfathomable motivations who's only as helpful as suits him in any given moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confrontations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonofblindness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonofblindness/gifts).



Of all the things Dean had expected when he’d heard a bang and a sudden yell from the motel room he and Sam were staying in this was not it.

He gripped his towel tighter around his hips pointed his gun levelly at Bobby’s unconscious form, given everything the man had meant to he and Sam the least they could do was ensue that Gabriel hadn’t made monster copies of him or anything. Sam, meanwhile, kept his weapon trained on the apparently once again not as dead as they’d been lead to believe archangel-cum-trickster-god who was beaming at them from the bed in a manner reminiscent of a particularly annoying puppy that seemed to sincerely expect praise whenever it fucked things up.

“You’re dead.” Dean blurted out, not entirely sure which of them he was talking too. Probably both.

Gabriel grinned. “What can I say guys, a millennia masquerading as a pagan god has its perks.”

Dean opened his mouth, the words ‘what’s dead should stay dead’ on his lips, because whatever he had pretended to be, Gabriel was an archangel not a god and they’d more than proven by now that archangels could die, but he couldn’t spit it out. Once upon a time he’d have said he could have thrown Gabriel a damn sight further than anybody could have trusted him but the archangel had been sincerely willing to die for them back at that hotel in Indiana, as well as giving them the info they needed to put Michael and Lucifer back in the pit. Not to mention that, having helped them or not, Gabriel still had a vindictive sense of humour and more than enough power to find a way to make him regret it, probably by counteracting whatever it was he’d used to bring Bobby back.

“Why now?” Sam asked, “Why have you resurrected yourself just now?” Like Dean he seemed to have realised that the archangel was the most likely source of Bobby – of the thing that looked like him -  appearing and was focusing on figuring Gabriel out first – it would mean less disappointment if things weren’t actually as they seemed.

Gabriel laughed. “Who says I have?” He shook his head. “No, I’ve been kicking around for a while now, very busy y’know, but as you two muttonheads are completely incapable of getting your acts together I figured it was about time I stepped in and gave you a kick start.”

“Busy?” Dean snapped. “Seriously? So what, while Cas was fighting Raphael, and Crowley and Eve were running around trying to turn the planet into monster-land-“

Gabriel snorted. “Not been back _that_ long guys, chill. You think I’d have let Castiel free the leviathan? Trust me, I had enough trouble with those things first time around and that was back before the fall when Michael was still useful and hadn’t gotten started with his case of ‘end-of-times’ tunnel vision.”

“Wait, you’ve beat the leviathan before?” Sam said. “How? Can you-“

Gabriel shook his head. “Nuh-uh. That was back in the days when humanity wasn’t even a twinkle in good-old Dad’s eye and, like I said, I had the combined power of all of the host of heaven on my side. These days you’d never be able to pull it off. Trust me, even the cockroaches would be wiped out. And you guys are anti-apocalypse, remember?”

Sam sighed and Dean could see the disappointment on his face. For a moment then it had looked like they might finally be able to find a way forward in this fight, but apparently they were to have no such luck.

“So how long have you been… uh… back?” Sam asked.

Gabriel shrugged. “By your boring chronological timeline?”

Sam glared and Gabriel smiled, with utterly unconvincing innocence. “A few months?”

“A few months?!” Dean snapped. “You’ve been alive a few months and known about the Leviathan and all this crap that’s going down and it didn’t occur to you that we might need your help before now.”

“I was busy,” Gabriel retaliated, “And you’re still alive aren’t you.”

“Bobby wasn’t,” Sam pointed out, but Gabriel rolled his eyes, gesturing to the man, who was now stirring into consciousness.

“He looks fine from here.”

“Only because you brought him back from the dead or whatever, which might not have needed doing if you’d been helping us out in the first place.”

“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, running around saving your whiney little asses isn’t in my job description. I like this planet, so I died to stop the apocalypse destroying it and I get back and find out while I’ve been gone you’ve managed to set the leviathan loose-,”

“Cas did that,” Sam argued, “And it wasn’t his fault Raphael…”

“Castiel got that free will you were fighting so hard for and _used_ it. An angel who’d gone millennia without ever having to deal with the notion of independent thought and then bang, he’s running the madhouse. You might as well have appointed a pre-schooler the president.” Gabriel glared. “I don’t care how you let it happen, but I’m not cleaning up your messes. You got the old man back-,” he paused to sneer at Bobby, who just sitting up. “And hey, maybe if I stumble across something that’ll help you I’ll toss it your way, or maybe I won’t. Who knows, because you’re _not my problem_.”

There was a quiet fury in Gabriel’s tone that reminded Dean of the way he’d talked back in the warehouse in Ohio. Centuries of anger and isolation and bitterness, repressed under a sheen of candy and cheap thrills, that had probably only been exacerbated by having been killed by Lucifer. As unreasonable as the archangel was acting, Dean could kind of see why he might be pissed off at coming back to find that the worldwide destruction hadn’t stopped. At least he’d had the year at Lisa’s to pretend that things were going to be okay.

For all that he’d had a bit of experience in dealing with pissed off archangels, Dean raised his hands and pondered how best to placate Gabriel.

“Okay, so you’ve been doing other stuff, that’s cool. I don’t suppose you…”

Gabriel smirked. “Hooked up with supermodels? Sure. Starred in a Hollywood movie? Oh y’know a few? Partied with your childhood heroes? Every night and Adam found it hilarious. Stole the declaration of independence? Easy.  Find out anything that might fix your leviathan problem? In case I didn’t make myself clear enough already – NO!”

“Fair enough,” Sam said reluctantly, “So if you… Wait, hang on – Adam?”

Gabriel shot him a look of condescending exasperation. “C’mon sasquatch - Adam Milligan, about yea tall, you dragged him into the pit ‘cos Mikey-boy was wearing him to the prom, your half-brother?”

“But Adam was in the pit...”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “The pit is designed to hold Lucifer, not humans. Little Castiel managed to get you out, remember.”

“Yeah but Sam came back wrong,” argued Dean, “First he was wacked-out and soulless, and now he’s got it back he’s got to deal with fucking hallucinations and hell flashbacks and is barely clinging onto his sanity.”

Gabriel pulled a face. “Cas fucked up, even new-and-improved he didn’t have the juice to get Lucifer out of Sam’s body, and haul Sam and his soul up and put him back together again.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” Sam protested, “Cas and Death both said that being in hell had… it had mutilated my soul. Bringing Adam back like that would be…”

“Still better than hell,” Gabriel cut in, “And unlike Cas, I didn’t just shove his soul in his body and dump it on earth to flounder.”

“Huh? So what, you sent him back to heaven for the dick-angels to have another go at?”

“Oh for… guys!” Gabriel whined, with a presumably fake affectation of hurt, “I haven’t. And seriously? Michael’s gone. Adam is back to being a nobody again, his heaven is once again a perfectly dull place, nobody.”

“Then why _haven’t_ you put him back there?” Sam demanded, “After all the crap he’s been through Adam deserves peace.”

“Sure,” Gabriel sneered. “I’ll just take the hell-mangled soul and ditch it to hang out in a heaven full of pleasantly tedious memories of a largely mediocre life. We can see how long it takes him to get bored and start poking at his wounds. I’m thinking two weeks earth time at maximum – any takers? No. Didn’t think so.”

“Then what?” Dean insisted. “He’s not in heaven but he’s not on earth either? So where-“

“Hang on!” Sam blurted, “Is this one of your weird time-space-manipulation things, like at-“

“If you’ve stuck him in something like TV-land I’ll gut your archangelic ass,” Dean snapped, “I swear I-”

“GUYS! Guys, guys, guys.  Cool your asses.” Gabriel looked exasperated, and like he was seriously considering just leaving. “I already told you, he’s getting all night parties – and Caribbean vacations and baseball games. ‘Cos unlike you, Adam isn’t a pain in my ass.”

“Why?”

“What’s that, old man?”

Bobby glared at the archangel. “What’s in it for you? Me I get, ‘cos you want the leviathan stopping and these two idjits aren’t gonna figure it out on their own. But why help Adam? He’s just some dumb Minnesota kid even if he did have Michael riding around in his meatsuit for a while.”

Dean lowered his gun. Apparently Gabriel had brought Bobby back properly.

“Hmm let me think…” Gabriel said. “Two brothers, Daddy’s favourites, big end-of-the-world destinies and a third brother just caught up in the middle and having to put up with the crap that goes off when people refuse to get their acts together and fulfil the purposes they were meant for and getting screwed over in the process. Hey! I wonder who that sounds like.”

There was a long pause. Dean could see the parallels. But, for all that Gabriel had been willing to help them, his actions tended to be based on saving his own skin. Compassion seemed to be an uncommon virtue in the angels, and Dean was somewhat sceptical of the idea that Gabriel might be any different. Still, if Gabriel was looking out for Adam’s soul in a strange fit of empathy, then he was certainly doing more for the youngest Winchester – Milligan – than he or Sam had managed. There was no reason for Gabriel to lie, and it wasn’t like they could force Gabriel into doing anything he didn’t want to, so…

“Fine.” Dean sighed. “So you dragged Adam out of the pit and brought Bobby back to life. Uh… thanks, I guess.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “You guess?” He shook his head. “Whatever boys,” he snapped his fingers, something that Dean was fairly sure he did just to be a douche, as although he’d seen the other archangels do it the act seemed to have no real effect on their powers, and vanished.

Dean looked from Sam to Bobby.

“Well c’mon idjits, your trickster pal didn’t bring me back so we could sit around like a bunch of gossipy old women. We got a leviathan to kill. Now tell me what you found out while I been dead…”


End file.
